The Serpent's Eye

by Brand, Thomas H.

  But then wherefore came this violence?

  I immediately searched around for Edgar's pages. I had kept them with me, and none had come from Caine or Dennings to retrieve them. I hoped against hope they had perished in the fire as had all other paper in my rooms, but on investigation I found the folder lying neatly under my bed; bound as I had left it last, untouched by the disarray that marked the rest of the room. Pulling open the ribbon and throwing the cover aside, I shuffled desperately through the pages. The mad Earl's half formed and non-sensical ramblings stared back at me, taunting my shaken sanity. I felt as if it were my own mind staring back at me rather than that of a sick and dying old man. Somehow the words seem to make more sense to me now. Less illogical. Still the same, but somehow more familiar.

  Then I found it, lost amongst the half blotted and ill-written letters. It had meant nothing to me before, but clearly something about it had caught my recollection. Now these words become so much more important.

  Across two pages of the thick paper are scrawlings that seem total gibberish. Words and phrases follow each other around the sheets with no discernible pattern or meaning. I had not even studied these in detail before, though clearly it had stuck with me. Now I see the sheet has numerous repetitions of the word "serpent" and the phrase "eye of the snake".

  Then at one point, in the middle of the pages, can be read the following line: "That tunnel. All. Us and Me. I am alone with all."

  With shaking hands I dropped the sheets to the floor. What could this mean? Do I somehow share the same madness as Edgar? Was he haunted by the same ghost that follows me?

  Thinking of the spirit that has been part of my life for so long, following and watching me, I suddenly made the terrifying realisation that it was no longer at my shoulder. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I felt alone. The feeling of being watched within my own room had left me. It was such a shock that I swayed violently where I sat.

  It was gone! Was I free? Was I my own man for the first time in months? Was this destruction around me and my lack of memory a relic of some unknown exorcism? Some process or ritual driven from my mind by its own execution?

  For a moment I felt hope rise within me but then, as I felt about my senses, I discovered a change in me. I could feel something new. Something different. The presence remains. It has not left me, but instead now hovers within me. It watches from my own eyes. As my fingers touch something it feels with me. It senses my words before I say or write them. I threw myself back into the corner. I feel as if I am laughing, but I am not. Is it him? This sense of duality should have felt alien to me, but part of my mind must have been taken by it for even as fear rose up fresh within me, I also felt an inexplicable sense of accomplishment!

  What has he done? What have I done?

  I quickly gathered what remaining things I owned that were still in one piece, and fled. Oh, how I wish I could have left my notes and Edgar's there on the floor, yet some mental urging pulled me back. I could not even think of stepping through the door without them. Their hold on me is tight. I cannot even say why I still write in this damned journal. Its purpose is long spent but I cannot rest without having written. I now see that the compulsion to continue with it was not my own, but his. Now I wish to stop, but I cannot resist the urge to continue. Poisoning the paper with these words. Is this how Edgar felt? Were his last hours spent in desperate battle with the need to fill those pages now in my possession?

  I have found myself temporary lodging in the cheaper part of town. They are not grand, but they fit to my reduced circumstances and the door has a firm bolt. I must sleep, yet I fear to. Resorting once more to opium is out of the question, so I have once more procured a supply of gin. I sit with it now, the lantern burning, and I wait. I do not know how much more I can take.

  Friday, 3rd January 1817

  I am afraid. I fear now that my life heads inexorably to some predestined conclusion and I am convinced I shall never again find peace or freedom. I am afraid of my own mind. Or is it my own mind? Do I even have mastery of myself? Something, someone, claims as much a hold on it as I.

  Since waking yesterday, I am certain the spirit has settled now within my soul. I can feel it. He watches through my eyes. Feels through my skin. He has been waiting. I see that now. I am no longer convinced my decisions are my own. Everything I do I feel as if... as if we both make the decision. Moment by moment he becomes more and I become less.

  Drink no longer has any power to numb me. I drank to excess last night in the feeble hope of preventing more dreams. No avail. I cannot say whether it is the lingering effects of the opium tonic or that he is fully inside my mind, but last night the nightmares returned in full. More so. As well as those images and terrors that have haunted me these last nine months are now elements of other things. Things I cannot write of. I cannot even bring myself to think of them. Just letting my memory brush remembrance causes the bile to rise in my gullet. I can feel him laugh as my mind fights. Why can't I be free? I shall never be free!

  I awoke well into the day, drenched with sweat. I could not move. I had no power over any aspect of my body. I was strangely calm, and for a while this felt the norm. As if I were used to having no control of the vessel that carries me. It was not for half an hour or so that an unease at the situation began to grow. Blood pounded in my eyes like echoing laughter. My breath heaved. Even recalling this sends me shivering. I am losing my body.

  Eventually my panic rose to the point where nothing could prevent my fleeing. At last I felt movement in my arms and wrenched myself from the sheets, throwing myself to the corner where I lay huddled and sobbing.

  How much am I as Edgar? So similar. The room. The fireplace. I stare at those pages and almost feel like they make sense to me now. So long ago, in that Buenos Aires room, I felt there was some meaning in these pages if I could just see it. I feel this again. I feel if I could tilt my head at just the right angle the writing would somehow come into focus. They are lain out around me now. This journal on my lap and those pages on the floor. So much madness, yet I can almost see the answer. I can feel the spirit looking from my eyes as if dangling the solution before me. It is not gibberish. I know it!

  It is warm. So warm and dry in these rooms. January weather. It doesn't seem correct. I smell harsh, dusty air around me. A gust? Some gust of heated air ruffles the sheets before me. It is not natural. If I do not concentrate I find myself pondering strange things. Tombs and deserts. Rites and practices with no holy purpose. My surroundings will, for a moment, seem wrong, but when I focus on these thoughts they scatter away like dust on the wind.

  The burning. The burning of the pages eats at me. Why did Edgar do such a thing? Wonder. Is the key lost in those that are burned? Why some and not all? All of my books were burned in my rooms. Except this journal and these papers. What burned them? Did I? Could I? Why? Carefully I took one of the old sheets and held it to the candle. I had expected some strong reluctance to come upon me from the spectre within. Nothing. No strange feeling of dread. No cold hand clenched around my heart. At once I screwed up my courage and thrust the paper into the flame.

  It did not burn! I held it there for more than a minute and not even did the parchment singe. It did not burn! What magic, what dark sorcery has been placed here I do not know but the paper did not burn. In rapid succession I took each sheet and forced it into the very middle of the candle's flame. Nothing. No blackening or charring or mark of any kind! This is how the papers survived Edgar's attempted destruction to come to me. What is this? Why are these words spared by this devilish intervention while others were permitted to burn?

  What of this journal? I curse the very thing and should have thrown it overboard as an offering to the sea that tried to claim me. Is it also so afflicted? Are my words on this matter forever stained upon this world by whatever magic imbues those faded pages? I cannot bring myself to discover. I could try. The candle is here before me. The flame hot. Yet I cannot. Is this some protective im
pulse from my possessing spirit, or am I simply too terrified of the truth? It survived the burning of my missing days. What would it mean if I could not? What does any of it mean?

  I am lost. My mind is not my own. Things all around me. This is not as life is. I knew I would be free upon finding the answer. I never considered whether I would be capable of understanding the nature of that answer. I can almost hear the creature. It mocks me. It waits. I feel those jewelled eyes upon me. It knows. It knows what is happening to me. Waiting. Waiting for me to fall. Fall into that dark stone embrace. It knows and sees and feels and senses everything. It is me. I am it.

  Edgar. It comes from him. Somehow. I do not know how and do not want to. Whatever this dark curse uncovered by the Leers, I wish none of it. I am it. They brought about the snake. The serpent's eye. The glowing jewel. Dark. Menacing. See us. All of us. I cannot escape it.

  Saturday, 4th January 1817

  I am lost. Gone. My mind is lost, and my body shall soon follow. I will no longer be the master of it. The spirit slowly consumes me. I feel him. He waits. Patient with the knowledge of years, he shall long outlast my fragile mortality. What can I do? I am as powerless now as I was months ago when his sights were first set upon me. Ignorance was no protection.

  This body. There is a battle over it. I am losing. This morning I woke once again to the same paralysis. I was frozen, unable to wrench control of a single muscle. Yet a calm covered me. All seemed well. It felt not as if I were losing control, but slowly gaining it. My thoughts were not my own. As I lay there, my mind swam with images and thoughts that were wholly alien to me. Half formed hallucinations floated before my mind's eye. Of empty deserts and towering stone walls. Of crowds and of solitude. Of great power. I held great power within. Great. Terrible. I was... not me. I was something. Great. Greater than all I am. I knew more. Knew things. Impossible things. Things that cannot be known, but yet I knew them. The room smelt warm; the dry heat of high summer, with the dust of the baked earth filling my nostrils. I felt it on my exposed flesh. I was not in my rooms. Not in London. Yet where else could I have been? The thoughts and memories of the one within my soul bleed out and contaminate. Falling. So many others.

  It was far longer this time before I could rouse myself out of those sheets; at least a good hour before I could run, fleeing my room bearing nothing but this journal and Edgar's words. I could not leave them. I wished to, but could not. I do not want this thing. I hate it. I curse its very existence. The words within it taunt me. Stark proof of my madness. Yet I am compelled to continue, cursing my own words as they scratch from the pen. I want to destroy it, to smear it to illegibility and wipe it from the world. I cannot. I have not the control. I cannot destroy it. Should I hide it, I am sure I would manage mere minutes before being compelled to retrieve it. What option does that leave me? I can see only one. Only one.

  I have failed. Lost. Huddled here by the river I can see no other choice. I felt their eyes on me as I ran. They see me, I know they do. Are they right? No. They all seek my downfall. They cannot be allowed to do this to me. Edgar. Cursed Edgar why did you do this? What was my crime?! I cannot escape! I sought understanding and answers. I sought reason. There is none. Nature mocks me with the knowledge that knowledge is beyond our reach. The people I see all seem so happy. So unaware. It will come for them. All of them. The world does not understand what is coming, what has come, what has always been. Time is not as we perceive it. We are so petty and narrow. The all encompassing snare. Why? Why here and now and me? This fevered madness fills me. The air is cold and a light snow falls yet I sweat as if the sun burns above me. I cannot breathe. It is too much.

  I must hide these words. I cannot stop writing, as if I must by some compulsion pour myself into these pages. Why do I still write? I cannot stop. Recording all I feel for some other to become ensnared? I flee from life yet this book remains. I can put it down for only moments. Cannot destroy it. Hide it. Yes hide it where none will find it. I have a place. I saw it in the streets but I must not think it. It shares my mind, feels what I feel. Blank. Must not. It will be safe. Must not return. Perhaps being separated will free me.

  No. I am foolish. I will not be free. When I am done, the dark stone chamber waits. Edgar waits for me. All of them wait for me. What other option? We are all trapped. All destined for that close, stone, enveloping blankness I see in my terror. I knew those souls. That means I am already there. Already trapped. Already cursed. Why fight? Some try. Edgar tried. He lasted longer than I, but what did it get him? Months? Years? Decades? A lifetime? Hope is forgotten. Fate is all. Snared.

  First the hiding. Then an end to it. That small victory is all I may find. My days are done. I accept that which I could not before. This has been my finish for so long, predestined by a force so much greater than that we see. So long decided. Denial is blindness. It is an end. An end.

  I only pray I have the strength to leave the journal and not return. Strength? Speed. I must be done fast. Must not think. It comes. I go. At the end it goes. We all go.

  Friday, 10th January 1817

  My dearest Letitia,

  Thank you so much for your last letter. Please reassure Mother I am well. London is not as terrifying as she continues on insisting to think. I have a good job, good friends, and good prospects. I am not living in some slum, nor frequenting any dens of iniquity. She has heard it all before, of course, but it seems she must be reassured, so reassure I must.

  I am sorry I could not return home for Christmas, but the firm has been very busy these last couple of weeks, for reasons I shall go into below.

  Today, all of us were excused work to attend the funeral of a fellow who used to work at the firm; one George Sandings. He's the one I told you about before. Seems he went a bit soft in the head and got into some trouble. An odd fellow, he always seemed a bit off since he returned from some errand in South America earlier this year. I worked with him for a short time, but never got to know him. He was a quiet man. Always twitching and looking about himself, and so intently focused it was unnerving. He had been let go from the firm a few weeks ago, after some business with him and the archives. They say he picked up some brain fever abroad that he never recovered from. I didn't really pay much attention. He was a nice enough fellow to work with. He kept to himself, but seemed solid enough. I suppose I worked with him more than most, but he did not socialise much. But his dismissal did leave the rest of us with a lot to carry on with.

  But wouldn't you know it, last week his body was found in the river. I'm not sure what happened, but according to those who discovered him he looked as if he'd been attacked by someone. Beaten bloody, by all accounts.

  Anyway, after the service Mr. Dennings comes up to me and hands me a journal. Apparently it was found with Sandings' body at the side of the river, along with some papers he had stolen from the office. It was how the Runner identified the body. Mr. Dennings has asked me to look into the affair, and see what Sandings got himself into. Apparently he had been working on one of our bigger accounts, and they want to be sure he didn't do anything to embarrass the firm.

  I've flicked through the journal. It just seems to be an account of his time in the Americas. I'll probably have a look through it and the papers he had with him over the weekend and make a start on Monday. There's no point in worrying now.

  I'll write again soon. Give my love to everybody.

  Your dutiful brother

  Andrew

  Thanks

  I have a few people to thank for helping through the process of writing this book.

  Firstly a massive thank you to my wife, Frankie. For someone who has so much to deal with herself, she is always supportive when I need to take myself away for a while and write. And also for the vast number of half finished drafts she gets to proofread before anyone else. Without her support this book would still be half finished.

  Thanks to my little sister, Emily, for her amazing work on the cover. Throughout my childhood I often wondered if she wo
uld come in useful one day. And she has.

  To my parents; who brought me up in a house of books, and didn't complain too much when I spent a large part of my childhood with my face buried in them.

  I would also like to thank all my alpha readers. Getting their advice and spelling corrections was invaluable. Without them my ships would have been travelling all over the place and I literally wouldn't have had an ending:

  Frankie Brand, Sue Brand, Robin Brand, Andrew Tucker, Joni-Rae Carrack

  Thanks guys!

  About the Author

  Thomas H. Brand is a writer and project manager. He lives and works in London. In his spare time he gets confused, as it was so long since he last had any spare time he's not sure what to do with it.

  Originally from Hampshire, he now lives in North London with his wife and two cats with three eyes between them. He finds he spends more and more of his time sitting staring at the computer screen or notebook page. He loves every moment. When he isn't doing that he can usually be found reading things other people have written instead.

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  Or you can get your hands on The Æther Collection right now in both paperback and e-book.